Prosecution Portrays Masters As A `Fixer`

Attorney Alan Masters was a ``master fixer`` who drew on his long association with corrupt police officers to kill and cover up the slaying of his wife, Dianne, federal prosecutors charged Thursday.

After a nearly monthlong trial, Assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick Foley summarized the government`s case against Masters, former Cook County sheriff`s police Lt. James Keating and former Willow Springs Police Chief Michael Corbitt, beginning with a chronology of the months before and after March 19, 1982, when Dianne Masters mysteriously disappeared.

But, Foley said in his closing arguments to the jury that the three had engaged in a pattern of illegal activities for more than a decade before the woman`s disappearance. The car, with the body in the trunk, was pulled from the Sanitary and Ship Canal in Willow Springs on Dec. 11, 1982.

The closing arguments will continue Friday before U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel, and the jury is expected to begin deliberating Friday afternoon.

Those illegal activities, Foley said, included kickbacks Masters paid to Corbitt in return for the referral of cases. And it included payoffs a witness said Keating would pick up from Masters` Summit law office to keep sheriff`s police from raiding Cicero bookmaking operations.

``He is the one who can put the right public officials in place, the one to make it go, the master fixer,`` said Foley, who is prosecuting the case with Assistant U.S. Atty. Thomas Scorza.

``Because of the prior corrupt association that Alan Masters, Corbitt and Keating (had) together, that association allowed Alan Masters to go to sworn police officers to kill his wife.``

None of the three is charged with murder. Foley conceded in his statements to the jury that the identity of the killer remained ``a gray area,`` though the prosecution alleges Masters cracked his wife over the head in their Palos Park home and then Corbitt shot her twice in the head.

But to obtain a conviction, prosecutors must only prove that Masters, Corbitt and Keating conspired to kill the 35-year-old woman, who was a trustee at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills.

In addition to conspiracy, the three are charged with racketeering, and bribery. Masters is also facing charges of mail fraud for collecting on a $100,000 insurance policy his wife carried through the community college. Prosecutors contend Masters used the proceeds of the insurance policy to pay off Corbitt and Keating for their role in the scheme.

Keating`s attorney, William Murphy, said in his closing argument that the prosecution had presented ``in sum and substance a weak, circumstantial case.``

Murphy pleaded with the jury not to treat what may have been innocent activities involving the three defendents as ``sinister.`` He said, for example, there may have been perfectly logical reasons why Keating met daily behind closed doors with Masters at the attorney`s Summit law office in the week before his wife disappeared.